How to make wine in your Instant Pot

From cultivating and maintaining prized vines to picking, fermenting and aging, the most exceptional wines take years to produce. Or maybe not — what if you could turn a bottle of grocery store grape juice into drinkable wine with your Instant Pot?

One food blogger and recipe developer in New Jersey seems to have accomplished this, and with surprisingly good results. David Murphy, who blogs at Foodnservice.com, flipped his pressure cooker to the yogurt setting and filled it with Welch’s Grape Juice, sugar and red wine yeast.

The result: wine that he describes as similar to a Merlot with a hint of a dark cherry and chocolate aroma. All without having to leave his kitchen.

In his blog post about his vino venture, Murphy says he enjoys a challenge, so he took this on. And everyone who has an Instant Pot is rejoicing!

Instructions

Murphy explains all the steps he followed to cook up his wine. He started by sterilizing his Instant Pot. This easy but important step kills bacteria with a diluted bleach solution. Nobody wants random bacteria in their wine (or anything else you’re cooking in your Instant Pot, for that matter).

YouTuber Follow Your Echo shows how easy it is to remove the buildup from the bottom of the Instant Pot:

The grape juice, granulated sugar and red wine yeast should then spend about 48 hours in the Instant Pot. After that, Murphy transferred the juice back to the plastic juice bottle to rest for up to a month. The color and taste evolved over time, and the fizziness from the CO2 diminished.

You can check out Murphy’s detailed instructions on his website.

‘Pleasantly Surprised’

Murphy shared his first batch of Instant Pot wine with brave friends, who were pleasantly surprised. Murphy is optimistic about developing additional varietals and trying his method with different grape juices and blends. He encourages fellow Instant Pot owners to do the same.

Time to stock up on grape juice and maybe invest in another Instant Pot!

Also, it’s worth noting that Instant Pot representatives confirmed to the “Today” show that it is safe to attempt to make wine in the device.

Other Ways To Make Wine At Home

If you’d like to try your hand at a more traditional means of making wine, the first thing you’ll need is plenty of wine grapes. AllRecipes walks you through the process.

Making it from scratch requires similar ingredients to the Instant Pot version (with wine grapes in place of grape juice), but preparing the grapes for fermentation takes some time and practice. Note: Use of feet not required!

What do you think? Would you drink wine made in an Instant Pot?